One key US official is quietly keeping Washington’s lines of communication open in the Middle East as the US and Israel endure their worst feud in decades over the war in Gaza.
CIA Director William Burns, a veteran diplomat and Arabic speaker, was in Cairo this week with Qatari and Egyptian mediators as U.S. President Joe Biden sparked a political firestorm by halting the shipment of about 3,500 bombs to Israel. The White House is increasingly concerned about massive civilian casualties if Israel launches a ground offensive on Rafah, the southern Gaza city where 1.4 million Palestinians are sheltering from the war.
Biden’s priority is securing a deal to release more hostages taken by Hamas in the deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel. And it will be up to the US intelligence chief to balance Biden’s carrots-and-sticks approach as Washington struggles to prevent the seven-month-old war from escalating further.
